While the use of alcohols as fuels is old in the art, it has never become a practical concept for use by the average motorist. Racing cars have long used blends and mixes of alcohols and gasoline to improve power and performance.
The problem with blends of gasoline and alcohols is that water vapor which becomes disolved in the blends, causes phase separation of the alcohol and gasoline to give an unuseable fuel.
Also the prior art is full of unsuccessful attempts at using straight methanol as a fuel to try to capture the added power found in the latent heat of vaporization of alcohols, but to no avail.
Further the prior art S.A.E. publication S.P. - 254 of June, 1964, "A Survey of Alcohol as a Motor Fuel", by J. A. Bolts, points out no advantage is gained in the use of alcohols if the alcohol has its heat of vaporization used prior to being put into the engine cylinder, and thus the article dismisses the use of alcohols for use as motor fuels because they contain no advantage over gasoline and to date alcohols have not been practical.
Also, in this day and time of pollution concern, there is a real demand for converting engines to better and different forms to continue the burning of gasoline; but, no solution has been looked at except LPG fuels to find a cleaner burning fuel. In fact, alcohols have been dismissed because of their inherent problems with water, cold start, etc...
Also, in using methanol as a single fuel, the prior art has experienced problems of Cold Start and uneven fuel distribution when using normal carburetors. The use of special carburetors causes great expense to convert the engines to run on methanol, which further drove the prior art away from the use of alcohols as motor fuels.
Also, all the prior art conversions for gasoline to methanol have been very impractical and have generally led to a one fuel system of either gasoline or methanol.
Another problem in the prior art was to find a way to inexpensively control the vaporization of liquid fuels such as Methanol and Ethanol. While the prior art has provided various systems, they have all been very complex and expensive.
Further, the prior art has found that alcohols, especially Methanol, can be very hard on fuel systems by dissolving gaskets, corroding and valves.